Letters to the Editor
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@ Fooled
Clearly you see things that I don't. I didn't think the LBJ thing was a big deal, though to steal a phrase from Joan Walsh, it was "tin-eared." But you can't honestly say that Bill Clinton wasn't invoking race when he brought up Jesse Jackson. Even Walsh saw it, and wrote about it.
As to the much vaunted experience question, Lincoln had less experience than almost any other president. He did okay. It was about character. Though if experience is vital, I'll point out that Senator Obama has held elected office much longer than Senator Clinton. Her "35 years" makes me cringe. She's counting her time as First Lady? Isn't that a little too Eva Peron for a US election?
I maintain that Bill Clinton was the best president since FDR. The country did astonishingly well under him, better than under Reagan who ran up massive debts. If Bill were running, I would vote for him in a second - or I would have prior to his campaigning for his wife. And Senator Clinton has done great things for New York. It is my ferverent wish that she replace the inneffectual Harry Reid as Majority Leader.
But, outside of all the spin, the distortions, the "misstatements" about things like Bosnia and NAFTA (really unforgivable to accuse Senator Obama of lying while you yourself are misrepresenting your own past on the issue) - outside of all that, if you can look to her campaign and really tell me that between the mismanagement of funds, the in-fighting, the lack of a coherent message of anything other than "I'm ready! Really!", the damage done to both candidates in the general to win the primary, the fear-mongering, the anything-to-win, and the fact that she had no plan other after Super Tuesday and so had to resort to smearing her opponent - if you can look at all that and say she's really an effective leader, nobody's fooling you but yourself.
As for the 'Crafty' label, I'd like to side with whoever said you could do much better. Myself, I like to stick to 'Senator'. For both candidates. It's something they have both earned, and whatever we feel about their behavior, they deserve that respect.
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@ RDisdier
Unfortunately, the Obama campaign chose this path.
He who lives by the sword dies by the sword, so to speak.
The Obama folks can deny it, but his rise in national polls began after his defeat in New Hampshire. As the campaigns rolled into South Carolina, Obama's surrogates became apoplectic about Hillary Clinton's reference to LBJ as an effective president, which was a benchmark that Obama did not want. So rather than allow people to ask the question "Does Barack Obama actually have what it takes to be a successful president?", his surrogates claimed that this was a racially motivated remark.
Back then, raising questions about Hillary Clinton's commitment to civil rights was his only path to the nomination.
I guess you could characterize the nastiness that you see now as blowback.
BTW, I will stick with Crafty Barack. If the shoe fits...
@ David Blixt: Once again, the Barack supporters compare how much of some experience versus no experience. As for the experience of Abraham Lincoln, back then Supreme Court justices were not all lawyers. It's a much more complicated world folks then it was in the nineteenth century.
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@ Picko
I am not saying dump Obama. Two months ago, Obama's people were arguing electability. They were citing Clinton's high negatives. Gradually, Clinton's negatives have been falling. Lately, Obama's have sharply risen.
I, too, say just let it play out and we will see what happens. The notion that Clinton should drop out when she is so clearly in the lead in PA is absurd.
Furthermore, Obama supporters always seem to forget that Obama also needs the superdelegates to win. Obama seems to see no problem with not counting Florida and Michigan.
My perspective on electability comes from not living among liberals. There are almost so liberals where I live and even those who claim to be liberal, when I actually probe them a bit, turn out to be pretty moderate. Obama's affiliation with Wright has an impact. Wright is not merely Obama's pastor. They have a long friendship and Obama even put Wright last year on his committee of religious advisers. The Republicans will make good use of this.
Also, when they figure out what "the social gospel" is they will make use of that as well. Obama is almost as left wing as I am and Wright comes across in many of his statements as being what many moderates would call socialistic.
Democrats need to understand that winning means compromise. Obama is a liberal running as a bipartisan. Questions will be put to Obama about his own perceptions of what constitutes the social gospel and about the admonition to avoid "middle-classness" in the Black Values System his church cites as important on their website. I suspect social gospel in Obama's church is very much like social justice in a Unitarian-Universalist Church (another hotbed of liberalism) and it will be seen as extremely lefty by the mainstream. We will see how long Obama's bipartisan message can work in the face of those realities.
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@ David Blixt
In what way was Bill Clinton "bringing up race"? Do you mean because Jesse Jackson was African-American? So what, Jesse Jackson is a true Civil Rights warrior and a talented leader. I would think that anyone would welcome the comparison, especially a man who may not have the same credentials.
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Reporting or Stenography???
It seems that WAR ROOM has become the spot where Salon places its stenography.
It used to be a place for original reporting throughout the day.
But we now have the spectacle of a Salon writer doing "quick reads" of material first published elsewhere.
Honestly, if any of us wanted to read Adam N., we would have done so at the NYT site. Same goes for all of the other reporters you crib for us.
What you're doing is not journalism... it's stenography.
Shame.
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Also about negative campaigning ...
taylormarsh.com has this:
While talking a lot about the politics of hope, change and unity, Sen. Obama and his campaign have been conducting a relentless and singularly personal assault on Hillary's character. They have blanketed big states with false negative mailers and radio ads and have described Hillary and her campaign as "disingenuous," "divisive," "untruthful," "dishonest," "polarizing," "calculating," "saying whatever it takes to win," "attempting to deceive the American people," "one of the most secretive in America," “deliberately misleading,” “literally willing to do anything to win,” and “playing politics with war."
This "full assault" on Hillary's integrity and character has reached a new peak since Hillary's victories on March 4th. One of Sen. Obama's top surrogates equated President Clinton with Joe McCarthy; another called Hillary a "monster;" and his campaign manager held an angry conference call (audio) claiming that Hillary is "deeply flawed" and has "character issues." That's neither unifying nor hopeful. If Sen. Obama really is the prohibitive favorite some say he is, these negative attacks make absolutely no sense. Why would a frontrunner seek to attack and divide? If Sen. Obama can't unify Democrats in a primary, how can he unify Americans in a general election?